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Second Life: Real Money in a Virtual World

You can make a lot of money buying and selling things that are not real. Second Life has built a booming virtual economy around some little animated characters called avatars.

Avatars live in a computer-generated city, and participants can create their own character for free. For a few pennies here or a dollar there, you can accessorize your avatar with new clothing, a car, even a house.

All that spare change has really started to add up and Second Life has earned hundreds of millions of very real dollars.

Steve Inskeep got a tour of the simulated city from Reuben Steiger, who runs a company called Millions of Us that helps businesses do business in Second Life.

Steiger spoke with Inskeep from a studio in San Francisco as their digital counterparts met outside a theater somewhere in cybertown.